ah, read all of your second post.
YES--you do need EotN, as that is how you access the Hall of Monuments. If that is your main goal, then you certainly need that, heh. There is plenty of PvE content. I played for nearly 4 years rather regularly, and spent less than 1% of that time with PvP. It has a lot of PvP, but I really don't care about it, outside of faction missions to increase ranks, which in turn increase functions of certain skill classes.
Though the end game content is mostly just farming/raiding, whatever, and when I was playing, much of that had moved on to the dungeons in EotN.
For me, the fun was in creating certain farming builds for areas and getting them to work. The skill system is what really shines in GW, and far outclasses something like WoW--you actually have to think about what you carry, and pair that build specifically with certain equipment or whatever to get it moving like butter. and with heroes, adding another dimension where builds can perfectly--and necessarily--compliment and depend upon each other.
When I first started (just as Factions was released) and learned about the "55 Monk," I was hooked on the entire concept. It basically started a cycle of getting all types of classes up to point to get very specific builds working well.
what class did you choose?
EDIT: If you really want to get to HoM and work on titles as quickly as possible (that is the majority of HoM--some of it is related to Elite (very expensive) armor sets, weapons (only Destroyer weapons, though, from what I remember--that is lame), pets, etc., then your best bet is to get someone to run you through much of the campaigns first (well, this can only really be done with Prophecies--skipping missions, that is), so you can unlock areas to access elite skills and start your character builds and titles.
As for title stuff, much of that is relatively easy to come by, but is quite expensive. The materials for these armor sets are both time-intensive to gather and/or expensive to purchase. In fact, the most expensive set is still the original elite set--Obsidian, which requires ectoplasm. At one time, Ecto was way up to near 25k/ecto, which could only be farmed in the Prophecies elite dungeon--The Underworld.
Anyway, you need to find a way to make money in the game, and that is through farming/selling, or buy low/sell high certain gear. You really need to learn the economy and how best to work with it. That always takes time.